


out with the old

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [223]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Beren is the best babysitter, Childhood Trauma, Frog is Amlach, Gen, Healing Arc is here!, Interlude, Luthien chose the right boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:34:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23741623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: The sun goes up into the sky each day, very high, very white, and as cold as a bird’s eye.
Relationships: Amlach & Arien, Amlach & Beren Erchamion, Amlach & Maedhros | Maitimo, Amlach & Original Female Character(s)
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [223]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	out with the old

The sun goes up into the sky each day, very high, very white, and as cold as a bird’s eye. Frog knows that the sun has gone up and fallen two times since Soldier deaded Sticks.

 _Killed_ , Sticks would say. _You mean killed, Frog, we got to talk proper._

But Frog knows that _killed_ is the dull eye, the jagged bone, the mouth. _Deaded_ is what it means when the dead are still walking around on their legs.

He will peel the dead off Sticks, soon. Then, together, they’ll take it from Russandol.

You can’t take the dead from what’s been _killed_.

Beren is brown like he is. Despite this, Frog hides inside himself for a while. Beren is patient, despite this, and brings them food on tin plates like the men had _there_.

“I’ve a special nose,” Beren explains, handing Sticks one plate and setting the other down a respectful distance from Frog. “I can smell hunger.”

Sticks eats the bread. She doesn’t speak. Frog is pushing her voice back and forth inside his head. She has said so many words to him.

 _Git up, run, eat, hush up or hop along_ …

He wants the food, but he wants something else more. He rocks back and forth, shaking his head. That makes the ground tilt and the sky tilt. It is the only way he knows to make time go backwards.

“He’s scared,” Sticks says sharply, to Beren. “Don’t rush him.”

“I wouldn’t,” Beren says. And he sits away from Frog, but friendly-like.

Beren is a Good One. Belle says so, and asks them to stay with him when she sleeps.

“Can’t we watch you sleep?” Sticks asks.

“Loves, I want you to stretch your legs and play. It’s safe to do here. I’m just tired—I shan’t vanish.”

Frog knows that Belle cries in her sleep, out of her one eye. He poked at the tears with a finger once ( _there_ ), but that seemed to frighten her, so he keeps his hands to himself now. They’ve given him a shirt, and new trousers with more than a rope to keep them up.

Beren offers strange shoes that are soft like a horse’s nose.

“They’re makeshift,” Beren says, which is a word Frog doesn’t know (having lived it all his life). “But perhaps they’ll keep your feet warm.”

They tell Beren about the _canos_ by the light of the second sun. At least, Sticks does, but Frog started it, because he was scrambling around in the grass, growling. He didn’t _have_ to. He just liked to. It made him think of Russandol.

 _Red_ , he cries, when it is his turn to sleep. _Red._

“Russandol was our friend,” Sticks says to Beren. “And we had to get out of the forest somehow. Wolves is safest! They know the paths. They can smell ‘em.” She cocks her head. “Special noses. Just like you.”

Russandol was scared. That’s why Frog held him, _there_. Down in the pit, he could feel it.

_I won’t hurt you._

Frog knew. He was just scared himself, and being troublesome. But the red was running down Russandol’s stooped shoulders, fading his hair, fading his eyes.

 _Yes_ , Frog thought, then. _Yes._

And he ran to him.

There is a new Russandol. His name is Amras, he is not so tall, and he tells of cats.

Sticks said: _We saw a cat once, didn’t we, Frog? You ain’t nothing, boy._

 _Sticks_ , Belle chided.

Sticks is all spiked and careful when Amras is near. He has come two times, like the sun (now it will be three, for the sun.)

“Cat,” Frog said, after. He is not—he can talk. He isn’t as Belle sometimes says, a _baby_. Babies are smaller than him; he has seen them in nests and hollows, and Sticks told him what they were.

He doesn’t want to say much, is all. The mouth will take the words right out of you.

The tent where Belle sleeps is dirty white, and Frog draws back its skin to go to its bones. Its bones are poles in the ground. Inside—

“We shouldn’t do much more than moisten his lips,” says Doctor Fingon. That is what Belle calls him: _Doctor Fingon_.

 _He is Russandol’s friend_ , she said. _Like Finrod._

But Doctor Fingon is also Soldier’s friend, now. Perhaps they were wolves together, once. Frog narrows his eyes.

On the ground, where Belle used to be, is Russandol.

 _Dead_ is all over Russandol, over every inch, a grey shape over his shape. It chokes Frog. It sends him rocking, rocking back to other times.

Sticks told him not to come here. She was right.

“Hello there, Frog,” Beren says. There are trees on the other side of Frog; they are silent. Beren is coming from the noise amidst the tents. All the people are crawling around and eating and speaking. They are not _working_. 

Frog shakes his head again and again.

“Were you visiting—someone?”

Beren’s tone isn’t like Soldier’s tone. It doesn’t say _trouble_. It is almost a little like Russandol’s, and Frog’s eyes fill with stinging water.

The mouth. How did Russandol climb out of the mouth?

Beren sits at his distance. Frog stops shaking his head.

“Have you always been Frog?”

He means _names_.

 _I’m not always to be Sticks!_ Sticks says, and Belle keeps saying, _Strela, E-strela_ , and Soldier is called _Gwindor_ , really.

Frog says, “I don’t know.”

Three words. Not names.

But Beren smiles.

Riding on Beren’s hip is good fun. Mothers do not carry babies like this, not that Frog has seen, but Belle has done this to him— _there_.

“Your friend Russandol is sleeping,” Beren says. “That’s all. When he wakes, he’ll see you. I just know it—I don’t know him, yet, but I know. I had to sleep once, a long time ago now.” He lifts his free hand, the one Frog saw—

There in the badness, there with the dead, when the sun was gone—

“See? A bullet went through it.”

“Like a tree.” He means Belle’s face.

Beren’s dark eyes and eyebrows go crinkled. Then he nods, his mouth sewn up. “Yes. Twisted, like a tree.”

They don’t go into the skin-and-bone tent. They go to find Finrod.

“You’ve got something stuck to you,” says Finrod. He is all goldy-yellow, like a dandelion. Frog likes the beads in his hair.

“Not just _something_ ,” Beren says. “A friend.”

Frog feels the _dead_ leave him, gone and grey like a snakeskin. He wriggles his blunt nose against Beren’s neck.


End file.
